Applications for $2.6M in aid written for two Cibola projects

By Jim Maniaci
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Applications for two federal grants totaling $2.6 million to bring 90 new jobs to Grants and Milan are being prepared. Based on standard economic development formulas, the projects would add at least $8 million a year to Cibola County's economy.

This is what participants in a gathering at the Cibola Arts Council's new gallery on Santa Fe Avenue in Grants learned Friday in a series of three connected meetings directed by the Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments in Gallup.

Tim Hagaman, the governor's regional economic development specialist in Gallup, introduced the two proposals for money from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, pointing out the project summaries were only drafts.

One would be for an existing company, the Mount Taylor Machine LLC of Milan. It would add 20 jobs for a biomass expansion with $1.06 million to be requested from EDA. The other request, for $1.522 million, would be to reactivate the tomato greenhouse in Grants, where a series of companies have failed with a big greenhouse next to the Coyote Del Malpais Municipal Golf Course on the city's east side, or to build a new one near San Mateo or in the Milan Industrial Park next to the Mount Taylor mill for some 70 new jobs.

In the case of the Mount Taylor factory, the average hourly pay is projected to be $15 per hour because of the need to hire high-tech employees such as scientists, specialists in biomass generation and horticulturists. This would mean another $624,000 a year in payroll and since each new dollar turns over at least five times within a community it also would mean an economic impact of at least $3.1 million a year.

The tomato-growing factory would pay about $7 per hour or about $14,560 a year per person. The 70 jobs would mean a payroll of slightly more than $1 million a year. And with the multiplier for turning over dollars within the community, it would add almost $5.1 million annually to the local economy.

Only one-fifth of the people would actually be picking the indoor-grown tomatoes, with the rest of the jobs coming from packaging, shipping and managing.

In the proposed application, the costs to be covered by the EDA grants include $1 million to drill a test, then a productionwell for geothermal electrical energy, along with $422,000 for a humidifier system and $100,000 for other improvements. This would be for the existing vacant factory on George Hanosh Boulevard in Grants.

For the San Mateo or Milan sites, another $2 million would be needed to construct the sprawling factory, the proposed application notes.

In San Mateo, the idea is to pump out the hot water from the abandoned uranium mines. In Milan, the idea would be to use the Mount Taylor mill's pellets. If not located on the mill's property it would be next door on the Village of Milan's 890-acre farm which it bought from the LDS Church, obtaining in the process some 1,100 acre-feet of water rights.

The smaller application calls the biomass project "the vertical integration of the wood pellet production industry."

This includes the mill's small diameter trees from the Cibola National Forest as part of the U.S. Agriculture Department agency's "collaborative forest restoration program," using scrap wood moldings and sawdust to form pellets, partnering with Placitas Recycling Center for waste wood to form into pellets, the state's salt cedar (tamarisk) eradication program's trees to form pellets all existing efforts along with a new effort: plant, grow, harvest and use switchgrass to form pellets.

Costs listed for the EDA grants to cover include $300,000 to prepare land in the Village Farm on which to grow the switchgrass, $160,000 for switchgrass seed, $500,000 for processing machines and $100,000 for other improvements.

The summary also notes two other related opportunities for the mill. One would be working with NASA's lab to engineer a sawdust sweep pellet production machine which the Milan company could then manufacture and sell. The other would be $400,000 from the U.S. Energy Department to build a demonstration project for gasification from the mill's production. After a year, the application concludes, "this equipment will be left for Mount Taylor Machine's utilization."

To contact reporter Jim Maniaci in Grants, telephone 285-6184 or (505) 870-7775 (cell).